


The Pantaloon

by SpookySad



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: "Crazy", Ableist Language, Alternate Universe, Blurry Does Magic, Blurry Has a Green Thumb, Blurry is a real nice guy, Fairytale-esque, Insanity, M/M, Magic Exists, Murder, Sorta Post-Apocalyptic, happy ending guaranteed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-06
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2018-12-24 11:22:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,789
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12011682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpookySad/pseuds/SpookySad
Summary: The Joseph men are doomed to lose their minds and watch everyone they love die, so it's probably for the best that no one gets too close to Tyler Joseph.Too bad that nobody told Josh Dun.





	1. Chapter 1

Prologue. 

* * *

 

You should never trust the Pantaloon. 

* * *

 

Snow falls furiously on a cold night in early December. Blurry leans against the open doorframe to stare out into the silence of it, unbothered by the chill. The house is freezing despite a fire spitting lazily in the ashy fireplace.

He glances over his shoulder to where Kelly lies on the floor in a nest of blankets, Chris kneeling next to her, rubbing the circulation back into one of her thin hands. They are whispering to each other. Kelly’s free hand clenches at her pregnant stomach, her knuckles white. Blurry looks back out into the snow. “It looks like we’ll have another two inches by the morning.”

Neither even glance at him. Their quiet conversation continues, frozen breaths rising like smoke plumes between them. Blurry turns away before he rolls his eyes and starts to whistle a tune. No fog comes from his breath. He frowns, cupping his gloved hands around his mouth and blowing furiously. The spaces between his fingers glow red like the lit end of a cigarette. When he pulls them away, his breath steams.

“—please. I can wait. Go to town and ask for someone. Beg for someone. Anyone,” Kelly says through stunted breaths.

Chris lifts her hand to his mouth so his warm breath rushes over her. “You know no one will come. Not for us. You don’t need to be afraid of him. He knows what he’s doing; he’ll take care of you.”

Kelly groans, clutching her belly. Tears have saturated the collar of her dressing gown. Her hair is knotted from writhing on the blanket since the night before last. Blurry can tell by the way her legs shake that the baby is near. “Send him away, if no one will come. I can do it without him, and you can help—”

“Don’t make me,” Chris says. “I don’t have the first clue about what to do. If something happens to you—”

“Soon,” Blurry says over his shoulder.

“Soon!” Kelly laughs without mirth. “Like I need _you_ to tell me.”

They dither for another ten minutes before Kelly can’t speak anymore. She stares up at the ceiling, tears soaking the hair at her temples. Her frantic breaths are the only sounds she makes, mouth open wide as if in horror at her own pain. That’s when Chris nods to Blurry. The two of them rush around the room collecting the things he’ll need to deliver the baby. They don’t need much.

“Push,” Kelly gasps.

Blurry hikes up her dressing gown, her stomach round and pale like the moon even in the light of the fire, riddled with angry stretchmarks. “Don’t push yet.”

“Have to—have—”

“Push before the door is open and you’ll break the doorjamb,” Blurry says, tugging off his gloves with his teeth. He spits into his palms and lathers his hands. Chris cringes at the sound. “Get me that water off the fire.”

The water is still simmering with residual heat when Chris carefully sits it in the dirt. Blurry puts both of his hands in. It feels fizzy, like how soda pop feels in his mouth. Removing his hands, he reaches between Kelly’s legs and feels the presence of the baby’s head. She’s been pushing anyway. He tries not to roll his eyes.

“It’s got hair,” Blurry says cheerfully. Chris smiles weakly, but Kelly looks catatonic, mouth gaping, chest heaving. “Go ahead and push when you need to.”

She immediately bares down, chin pressed against her tear-soaked chest, mouth pressed into a thin line, face turning red. They’ve waited so long that it only takes her a handful of pushes before Blurry can gently twist the baby’s shoulders and it comes sliding out mottled red, yellow, and white with blood and vernix.

The cries fill the house. _Strong lungs._

“What is it?” Kelly breathes, too tired to lift her head to look.

Blurry looks between the baby’s bloody legs and laughs. He wipes away sweat from his forehead with his forearm and leaves a streak of blood on his cheek. Reaching into the boiled water, he retrieves the scissors and cuts the pulsing cord himself. “Congratulations,” he says. “It’s a boy.”

“ _No!_ ” Kelly shrieks. “It can’t be. It can’t be.”

He wraps the squalling child in a towel and puts it on her chest, but she doesn’t reach for it. Chris watches, hands clenching and unclenching on his thighs while he stares at the wriggling, screaming baby.

“Push again,” Blurry says. “You’ve still got work to do.”

But it’s easy work, and Blurry does most of it for her. He wipes away the blood that comes after the placenta. Wipes again. Wipes again, listening to them talk over the cries of their child.

“Not a boy,” Kelly gasps. She’s shaking, teeth chattering. Blurry pushes aside the blood-soaked towel and grabs another. “I won’t—I can’t. I won’t have a boy. We said it would end with you. You promised me it would, Chris.”

“That wasn’t his promise to make,” Blurry says. “It was fate.”

The glance she gives him is saturated with hate, lips turning blue with the cold. Chris lifts a hand to gently pat at the inconsolable child, the smattering of black hair. He seems transfixed, staring at the red face and tiny wrinkled hands. “It’s too late,” Chris says. “It’s a boy. He’s ours. What else can we do?”

There comes a breeze and Blurry realizes that he’s left the door open. Snow comes in and sprinkles itself on the floor. He flicks his finger and the door closes gently. He can’t tell if Kelly is shaking from the birth or the blood loss or the cold. “Quiet,” he says to the baby and its cries stop in its throat.

In the quiet, Kelly whispers: “We could put it out in the snow. It wouldn’t take long and—and surely it wouldn’t hurt as much as some things. Or maybe Blurry could do something. Something painless. ”

Blurry sits back on his haunches, looking from one to the other and then to the baby who squints blearily with unfocused, slate colored eyes. _Fascinating,_ he thinks. His blood races, wondering what choice they will make, wondering if they feel the thrill of having a life in their control. He washes his hands in the steaming water and wipes them dry on his pants.

“We can’t do that,” Chris says gently. “You don’t mean it.”

Kelly cries and says nothing.

Blurry stokes the fire with his hand before tugging his gloves back into place. “Well?” He asks them over his shoulder.

“He’s ours,” Chris says again, stronger. “We can call him Tyler.”

With his back to them, staring into the fire, Blurry smiles.

 


	2. Chapter 2

Sanity is a cozy lie.-Susan Sontag

* * *

 

It is Christmas of 1996 and snowing. Tyler wipes his hand against the bumpy glass of the window and squints through the persistent grime to watch the soft flakes decorating the backyard. He can see his mother with Maddy held bundled up against her chest, swaying like slow dancing. If he presses his ear to the gap between the glass and the frame, he can barely hear the gentle sound of her singing his sister to sleep. He likes the sound of his mother’s voice and wonders why she never sings to  _him._  Maybe she did, when he was younger—before he can remember.

A hand falls on his shoulder, startling him despite the gentle touch. He looks up into the dark eyes of his Uncle Blurry who smiles and squeezes. “We’ll get another two inches by the morning. If you behave tonight, maybe I can talk your dad into letting us build snowmen after we open presents.”

Tyler wrinkles his nose. “It’s too cold. I’m tired, anyway.” Listening to his mother sing had made him sleepy.

Uncle Blurry makes a noise in the back of his throat. “Youth is wasted on…everyone but me. Come on, kiddo. They’re taking the family photo before your grandfather gets here and ruins the party.”

“What about mom and Maddy?”

A smile blooms across his only uncle’s face. He ruffles Tyler’s hair on his way to the back door. “I’ll get them. It’s  _too cold_  for you.”

Tyler watches through the window as Blurry stalks through the snow, ruining a path with his footprints. He can’t hear what his mother and uncle say to each other, but it doesn’t sound happy. His mom clutches Maddy closer, pressing her tiny face into the crook between her neck and shoulder. After a moment, Blurry starts carefully walking backward, easing his shoes into the footsteps he made. One by one, the tracks disappear leaving unmarred snow.

Tyler shivers and turns away.

Gathered in the tiny main room of his house is every last living Joseph. The fire in the fireplace is burning high, crackling and smelling like the pinecones his cousins picked off of the dead evergreen trees to toss into the flames. It’s dim and warm and it smells like good food which makes his stomach growl. In the corner sits a stack of gifts: some wrapped up in newspaper or tied up in plastic grocery sacks. Set up in another corner is an old Polaroid camera on a stand.

“Tyler, up front,” his father calls, maneuvering his cousins into their places for the photograph. “Where’s your mother?”

“Coming,” he says. When she arrives behind Uncle Blurry, there are snowflakes in her hair, and Maddy is drooling on her shoulder.

“Everyone in place?” Blurry asks, standing behind the camera.

“Are you going to be in the photo this year?” Zack asks.

“Your father doesn’t like us to be in the same photo at once,” Blurry says, holding up both hands to frame the picture. “It emphasizes how much better looking I am. Okay. Everybody in place? Say  _CHEEEEEESE_!”

#

It isn’t much longer until the oldest living Joseph arrives. Tyler’s grandfather is a mean looking man with a face like a bulldog, tufts of thinning white hair and liver spots sprinkled across his wrinkled scalp. Tyler’s grandmother is a large, unhappy woman who reminds him of the balloon he saved from his birthday party earlier that month, the one that wilts more every day. Grandpa Joseph deposits an armful of badly wrapped gifts into the corner and takes the nicest chair in the house without asking. Brooding, he glares at the children who are playing a game of tag, weaving in and out of the adults’ legs.

Tyler’s parents gave him and his siblings rules about his grandfather. Don’t speak to him unless they have to. Don’t bug him. And don’t ever,  _ever_ be alone with him.

When dinner is served on chipped china plates, Grandma Joseph hobbles to the tiny kitchen to get plates for two. Without utensils, they all eat with their hands, except for Grandma who just rests her plate in her lap until it grows cold. There’s not a lot of food, but there’s more than usual, and after the meal is finished, Tyler’s mother passes around a small tin of cookies. Everyone gets one except for Tyler who has to tear his in half to share with Maddy who gets crumbs all over herself. It’s the best half of a cookie Tyler’s ever eaten: soft and covered in cinnamon and sugar.

Afterwards, a sort of content sleepiness falls over the party. The children have mostly wound down and are seated in front of the fire, Maddy's asleep in Zack’s lap, listening to Uncle Blurry sing Christmas carols about white Christmases and something called  _reindeer_.

“What’s a reindeer?” Tyler asks his father.

He frowns and shrugs. “I don’t know. Do me a favor: go get more wood from out back. The fire’s getting low and we’ll need to see to open presents.”

Tyler trudges through the kitchen trying not to scuff up dirt from the floor. The stove in the corner has died out, nothing but coals. Candles burn on the wooden dining table (the one that has a leg shorter than all the others), but they’re burning low and Tyler struggles to see.

The darkness obscures the figure sitting at the table until Tyler is too close to get away. His grandfather’s hand closes around his thin wrist with uncanny strength. He jerks Tyler closer, wrenching the boy’s arm painfully. Tyler wants to shout—to scream, but his throat feels closed up. The old man smells like mothballs and dust.

“You,” his grandfather says, breath smelling of the cookie they’d all enjoyed earlier. “You, boy, you think that you’re special?”

Tyler swallows, trying to answer.

“You do, don’t you? You and all the others, so  _special_.” Grandpa Joseph is trembling all over. “Fate will get even with you and all your rotten family! Fate will chase you down and gobble you up and peel your saggy skin from your bones! There won’t be anything that I can do to help you then, nothing nobody can do. Put him out in the snow, I said when you were born. It wouldn’t take long at all!”

“Dad?” The dim light from the living room is soaked up by Tyler’s father’s silhouette in the doorway. With the light behind him, there’s no way to see his expression. “Dad. What are you doing sitting here in the dark?”

Grandpa Joseph lets go of Tyler’s wrist. The spot feels cold and aches. The old man doesn’t speak.

“Tyler, go get the firewood.”

Trembling, Tyler does as he’s told. When he comes back in, Grandpa Joseph is being shuffled to the living room, leaning heavily on his wife’s arm. Tyler’s dad takes the snowy log from his hand and hugs him to his side. He soaks up his father’s warmth, still shaking. “You’re okay,” his father says, patting his hair. “Did he hurt you? No? Just scared you, see? You did good. Go sit with the other kids. We’ll open presents.”

Tyler avoids looking towards the side of the room where his grandfather is sitting. He sits cross-legged in the dirt by his siblings, and in the warm glow of the fire, starts to calm down. It’s his turn, along with Zack, to pass out the presents this year. When Tyler brings a box wrapped in newspaper to his grandfather, he stares down at his feet.

“What is it?” Grandpa Joseph asks.

“A present,” Tyler says.

There’s silence. When Tyler glances upward, the old man is gaping at him. He has no teeth and his tongue looks white and furry. “A present?” He asks. “From you?”

Tyler nods. It’s from his family (he’s not even sure what the present is, exactly) but close enough. The old man’s eyes fill with tears. He runs his withered fingers over the newspaper reverently, gently fingering the lopsided, twine bow. Before he can say anything else, Tyler takes the chance to nearly sprint away. By the fire sits a modest pile of presents for him. He opens the one from his grandparents first, the package only a little bigger than a matchbox. It’s a deck of cards, the top struggling to stay closed from being opened so many times. It’s actually pretty neat.

That’s when Zack starts screaming. The box on his lap is cardboard, held closed poorly with duct tape. Tyler leans over to peer into the box but it is snatched away by his mother. Their father is there, pulling Zack up off of the floor to clutch him into a hug, his brother’s skinny arms immediately wrapping around their father’s waist as he continues to wail.

His parents look into the box and their faces screw up, wrinkling in horror. A smell has filled the room, like something rotten. His mother disappears with the box, but the smell lingers. On the floor, trampled under his father and brother’s feet, Tyler finds the name tag that had been taped to the gift. TO: ZAK, FROM: GRANDPA N GRANDMA.

Uncle Blurry takes the tag out of his hand and scans it quickly. He hums. “I guess the party is over.”

#

It is late that night. Zack has cried himself to sleep, and now his every breath sounds like snot and residual tears. Tyler can’t sleep. Their bedroom has a dirt floor and no bed, nothing but some tattered blankets laid on the floor. The three boys are situated around Maddy to keep her warm, even though she kicks in her sleep. Tonight, Tyler has the spot closest to the wall and the window where the cold seeps in. He shakes with the cold and distracts himself by fingering the bump of the deck of cards where he stashed them under his pillow, wishing for daylight or a fire in the fireplace so that he can spread them out on the floor at look at them.

He’s still awake when the voices come, muffled, from the window. Carefully slipping away from his siblings, he stands up and peeks out the window into the backyard.

Through the dirty glass, he can barely make out three figures standing in the darkness. The snow is still falling. His father has a shovel, straining to dig through the frozen ground while his mother watches on passively, arms crossed over her chest for warmth. Uncle Blurry stands a little ways away, nudging the box of Zack’s gift with his toe, peering inside.

“—can’t believe that old man is so far gone,” his mother says. “Zack is traumatized. He’s never going to forget this.”

“Talk about a gift that keeps on giving,” Blurry says. “Do you think it was dead when he wrapped it up? Or do you think he wrapped it weeks ago and it died slowly? It’s honestly hard to tell.”

“Do you mind?” his mother snaps. “This is serious. He’s getting worse all the time. Something needs to be done.”

Tyler’s father stops digging to lean on the shovel, breathing heavily. Blurry gently lowers the box into the hole. He makes some weird motion with his hands and takes the shovel to start filling it in.

“Something needs to be done,” Tyler’s father agrees. “But I don’t know  _what._  This is the way it’s always been in our family.”

“That’s the spirit,” his mother replies bitterly. “Don’t you want better? The way I see it, you’re next, Chris. Then Tyler.” She jerks a thumb towards Blurry. “ _He_ gets a free pass. Where’s the justice in that?”

“It’s not justice at all,” Blurry says. “It’s just how things are. I’m magical. I can’t help that.”

“Then help  _us,”_  she says. “Can’t your fancy fucking magic do anything to stop this? Can’t you cure this?”

“Can’t cure fate,” Blurry mutters. But the shovel slows. From this distance, it looks like they’re all holding their breaths, but Tyler can see the heaving plumes of their exhalations. “But maybe there’s something I could do. I’ve never tried.  _None_  of us have ever tried. Maybe…”

“Do you really think so?” His father asks lowly.

The snow continues to fall in the silence. Tyler holds his breath, ear pressed against the crack in the window, straining to hear any sound.

“We won’t know unless we try,” Blurry says. “It’s probably too late for him. Probably too late for you, Chris. But—”

“Tyler.”

“—maybe.” Blurry shrugs. “And who knows? The kid might be magic like me.”

The thought makes Tyler’s stomach tingle. Magic. Nobody he knew was magic, nobody except his uncle. Sometimes, magic frightens him, but other times watching Uncle Blurry’s magic made him feel like he was flying. To have that power—to be that special…

“God forbid he be anything like you,” his mother says.

“There is no God.

“You’d rather your oldest son die than be anything like me,” Blurry says. “Don’t worry Kelly. More than likely, all your dreams will come true.”

His mother calls Blurry names that Tyler isn’t supposed to ever, ever repeat. His uncle’s words turn over and over in his head. They’ve got jagged edges that scrape up his mind and hurt. Part of Tyler knows that his mother doesn’t like him much—doesn’t like any of his siblings much, except for Maddy—but that doesn’t stop him from pretending he  _doesn’t_  know. It doesn’t stop him from hoping that maybe if he helps with chores and doesn’t eat more than his share at dinner that maybe, maybe his mother’s feelings will change.

“If he is magic, we would already know. Wouldn’t we?” His father interrupts his mother’s heated slew of slurs.

Blurry stares away into the forest of dead trees behind their house, the great spindly branches looming sickly overhead. “Maybe not. I’ll come over in the morning. We’ll figure it out one way or another. But for tonight—I need to think.”

He turns towards the house and begins trudging through the snow. His tattered long coat has great holes in it, and for a moment Tyler can see through them as if there isn’t a body under that coat at all. Though they are too far away for him to possibly be seen in the dark window, Blurry waves to him. Tyler ducks his head down out of sight and scrambles back to the pallet of blankets, curling up around Maddy (who kicks him in the stomach).

It takes a long time for him to fall asleep.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to anyone who gave that prologue a shot, and many more thanks if something made you come back to this fic to read the next installment. Please leave a comment and give me your thoughts.
> 
> Find me on twitter where all I ever fucking do is talk about fic and my baby: spooky_sad


	3. Chapter 3

I wanted the whole world or nothing.-Charles Bukowski 

* * *

 

 

Midday finds Tyler and Uncle Blurry trudging through shin deep snow under the oppressive gray sky. In the steeper drifts, Blurry’s long coat drags behind him like a cloak. Tyler is wearing his warmest pants (two pairs of them) and still feels soaked and frozen to his bones. Icicles hang from the trees’ dead branches like glassy teeth in a monster’s maw, like something out of one of his nightmares.

“How much further?” Tyler asks as politely as he can with snow in his socks. He wipes his dripping nose on his sleeve but the drip returns again and again until his skin is raw.

Uncle Blurry points to an opening in the tree line at the edge of town. “Just another five minutes through there and we’ll arrive at _casa de_ Blurry _._ Didn’t you wear your snowboots like I told you to?”

“They’ve got holes in them.”

Blurry hums. He crouches. “Hop on, kiddo.”

Though Tyler feels far too old and big to get a piggyback ride from his skinny uncle, he does as the older man says. Blurry must be using magic because, despite the extra weight, he doubles his pace until Tyler has to wrap his arms around neck to hold on. He hides his face in his uncle’s winter hat to smother his smile, inhaling a faint chemical scent on the warm wool. Uncle Blurry has a special way of knowing when Tyler wants to be treated like a child and when he wants to be treated like an adult. Maybe it takes magic to be that thoughtful.

They pass into the treeline. The branches stretch from either side overhead like skinny arms endlessly reaching for each other, blocking out the last of the dim daylight. Being pressed against his Uncle’s back spares him from the worst of the wind, and when the man begins to hum some nameless tune, the vibrations nearly lull Tyler to sleep. The smallest part of him feels guilty that he feels happier, more at _home_ with his Uncle than with his parents and siblings, but he buries that guilty part down like ashes piled over a live coal.

“Uncle Blurry,” Tyler mumbles. “Why do you live so far away from everyone else?”

“Because I value my privacy,” Blurry says.

“Is that why you never let us come to visit?” He tries not to be hurt.

Blurry shifts him up, getting a better grip on Tyler’s skinny thighs. “If you’re lucky, one day you’ll have something that is all your own; then we will see how quick you are to share it.”

Tyler, who has never had a single thing that belonged to him and him alone, thinks that if he had something he loved so much, he’d share it with everyone.

The trees part and Blurry’s modest home is visible. He’d taken the bones of a house from Before and refilled it with new guts. The glass isn’t warped and foggy like the windows at Tyler’s house, and when he peers into the glass, he can see nothing but darkness, not even a hint of fabric drawn across the inside of the windows. Beside the front door rests firewood under a snow-covered tarp, and although there is no one home, smoke curls from the chimney.

“Around back, nosey,” his Uncle says. Tyler’s footsteps follow while his head turned every direction, taking in all there is to see: the glossy black shingles on the roof, the smoke from the chimney that curls into figures writhing like bodies, a great hulking, skeletal piece of rusted metal half buried beneath dirt and snow.

Then there was the backyard, which he gapes at with wonder. Uncle Blurry’s garden is a sight to behold, larger than Tyler’s whole house. No snow has fallen there in the clearning although there is no forest overhead to protect it from the elements. The grass is lush and green in between the rows and rows of plants that Tyler couldn’t name if he tried: flowers with two heads on the same stem, herbs that crawl along the ground, trellises rising like sentinels snaked with vines covered in fruits of colors and shapes that Tyler has never seen.

“The grass,” he says. “Why is it that color?”

“That’s the color it’s supposed to be,” Blurry says. He motions Tyler closer and they step out of the snow onto the grass together. The air is immediately warm and fragrant. Without asking, he sheds his coat and wet shoes, peeling off his socks. The grass is soft between his toes, not stiff like straw.  He spends several minutes walking the rows, dodging bugs with wings that buzz and flit from flower to flower. Uncle Blurry sits on a bench made of stone and watches silently. When snow begins to fall, it melts in the air above the garden and vanishes.

At last he wanders back to his Uncle and sits beside him on the bench. “I wish I could stay here forever.”

Blurry smiles. “Me too.” He holds out a flower. “Here. For you.”

Tyler takes the flower. It is small enough to fit in the palm of his hand, thin and green stemmed, with soft white petals that look like five-fingered leaves from trees. In the center is a tiny sun of pollen. He presses it to his nose and inhales a scent like sand, then sneezes. “Thank you,” he says.

“Your parents want me to see if you can do magic like I can,” Blurry says. “I know you heard us talking last night. You probably heard a lot of things that didn’t make any sense. If you have any questions, I’ll do my best to answer them.”

“What’s wrong with grandfather?” Tyler asks. He strokes a thumb against the petals and they shiver like wind through the trees.

Blurry opens his coat. From inside a breast pocket, he removes a book the size of his palm with a brown leather cover bound closed with glossy ribbon. The ribbon untwines and Blurry holds out the tiny book, filled with pictures the likes of which his Uncle takes of the family every holiday, only much, much older, because these are in _color_.

There is a man and woman, arms slung around each other. In the background is the strangest thing Tyler’s ever seen: a great pointed tower that pierces the night sky lit up with lights. The people are generically familiar, with dark curling hair and straight, fine noses.

“What’s that?” Tyler asks, pointing to the Tower.

“It was a Tower in France,” Blurry says. He waves a hand. “It’s gone now. What’s important are the _people_. That’s your great-great-great grandfather and the woman he married. In this picture, she is pregnant with your great-great-grandfather, but no one knows that yet. I have several passions: coin collecting, button sorting, photography—but genealogy is what I’m good at. I can tell you the birth date, occupation, shoe size of every person with a drop of Joseph blood for nearly two centuries, and _that’s_ why I can say without a doubt that it started with him.” He taps the man with the curling hair, smiling in front of the Tower of Light. “Robert. He was the one who was cursed.”

“Cursed?” Tyler asks. He doesn’t know much of curses except from stories. “By who? What for?”

“ _That_ —is the greatest mystery that has plagued our family for generations. If you figure it out, let me know. But your great-great-great-grandfather went crazy the year he turned fifty. That year, he lost his job. He gambled away his house. Then he took an ax and chopped his wife into pieces before drowning himself.” Blurry flipped the page to a group of children squinting at the camera in the sun, one holding up a scaled fish half the size he was. His Uncle starts to point at each of boys. “Killed himself. Killed his wife and spent the last half of his life in an asylum upstate. Killed himself. Him? He killed his last living sibling and then jumped off of a bridge.

“And once they all died, when they were cut open, their brains were filled with holes, like something had crawled inside and eaten them away.” Blurry pinches the pictures together and flips through them quickly until they go from color to black and white. “Every single one of them, Ty. Every last man in our family. Sometimes when they’re fifty, sometimes when they’re one hundred, sometimes when they’re ten years old—they combust. When that happens, it’s best to just get out of the way.”

“I don’t understand,” Tyler says.

“You don’t understand, or you don’t want to understand?”

“Both, maybe?”

“Your grandfather is very sick. Do you remember Halloween?”

“When he broke Jay’s arm. But that was—”

“—an accident? Use your head, Tyler.”

Tyler doesn’t want to use his head. He doesn’t want to think at all: not about the book of dead people, not about his grandfather’s brain turning into Swiss cheese, not about the box buried in the backyard. But he can’t stop thinking about it either.

“One day,” Tyler says. “It will be dad.”

“Yes.”

“One day it will be _me_.”

“Perhaps,” Blurry says. He gently plucks the flower from Tyler’s hand. “But perhaps not. Magic is useful for many things. I’m not sure if it can heal a person who is already sick—I promised your father I would try, and I do plan to—but it _can_ keep you from getting sick at all.”

Tyler frowns. “So, how can we tell if I have magic?”

Blurry presses the flower between his palms. Something in Tyler’s chest twinges painfully—the flower was so beautiful, it was a shame to destroy it. But when Blurry opens his hands, the flower has turned to paper like origami, folded flat. “You have to find it to wield it. I can’t do it for you. You have to close your eyes and look around in all your guts and bones and see if there’s anything in there that sparkles. Then you’ve got to grab it with both hands and make it do what you say.”

He presses the paper flower between his hands again, rolling his palms. When he opens them, it is a cigarette that he lights by blowing on the end. It sizzles when he presses the ember to his palm, but it’s like his flesh is made of stone and no mark is left behind. He blows on the ashes and it turns to dandelion fuzz that drifts away on the breeze. Bending down, Uncle Blurry plucks another white flower, and this time he hands it to Tyler.

“Those aren’t very good instructions. It’d be a lot easier if I knew what I was looking for,” Tyler mutters, holding the delicate stem like the flower is made of glass.

“It’s not something so easily explained. You need to find it and experience it for yourself,” Blurry says. Tyler doesn’t like the sound of that. He cups his hands around the flower’s blossom and presses the cross of his thumbs to his lips. Closing his eyes, he tries to take his Uncle’s words to heart: looking in his guts, looking for something that glitters in the darkness. All he can think about is an ax, a box in the backyard. After many long moments, he opens his hands and the flower remains.

Did he expect anything different? There has never been anything special about him except the lottery of chance which he won to be born first. He is mediocre in most things: chores, studies, the games the other children play in town. He has never had any passion, any talent. There is no reason he would be magical. Then why is he so disappointed?

Tyler starts to cry, his own mortality clutched as a flower in his hand. His Uncle wraps a warm arm around him and pulls him close, and Tyler is too young to feel any shame about clutching his coat and crying into it. Blurry holds on to him like he’s liable to float away, and Tyler wishes he would.

“Don’t be afraid,” his Uncle says. “Hush now. The future is very scary, but it’s going to happen whether we are afraid or not. Best to be brave.”

Wiping his face, he tries to be brave. “I think I want to go home now.”

“Okay kiddo. Let’s get going.”

When Tyler tugs his socks and shoes on, they are dry. He takes one last look around the garden, committing it to memory against his will. This is a magical place—he doesn’t belong here. With care, he leaves the flower on the stone bench. Why did his Uncle have to pluck it at all? It shouldn’t have to die for Tyler’s sake.

Blurry crouches so that he can hop up on his back, and they begin the trek across town back to the shack Tyler lives in with his family. “Tyler,” Blurry says. “Just because you aren’t magical doesn’t mean you aren’t special. Do you understand?”

That sounds exactly like what it means, Tyler thinks morosely, resting his cheek against Blurry’s back, but he nods.

#

No one is there to see the flower turn to glass on the bench. It crumbles to sand, and the wind takes it away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also there is something ILLEGAL that I want to talk about on here but I LEGALLY CAN'T TALK ABOUT IT IS SOOOO ILLEGAL AND AGAINST THE LAW but I can talk about it on Twitter so come check out my pinned tweet. 
> 
> Come find me on Twitter (Spooky_Sad) and Tumblr (sosaditsspooky).
> 
> Credits to my patrons: Brea M., Sam W., adsnoggin, and Melissa P.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm criminal for starting another fic when Someone Else's Dreams hasn't been updated since February but oh well, lock me up. This might be a little slow to start, but I hope that once things get going, it will be neat-o. Let me know what you think? I've got those 'first chapter' jitters... 
> 
> Come @ me on Twitter: spooky_sad


End file.
